A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking marathon) is a design sprint-like event, in which often computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, product managers, project managers, domain experts, and others collaborate intensively on software projects.
Hack day event
The goal of a hackathon is to create functioning software or hardware by the end of the event.Hackathons tend to have a specific focus, which can include the programming language used, the operating system, an application, an API, or the subject and the demographic group of the programmers. In other cases, there is no restriction on the type of software being created.
For an application typeEdit
Some hackathons focus on a particular platform such as mobile apps, a desktop operating system, web development or video game development.
Mobile app hackathons like Over the Air, held at Phoenix Park, Ireland, can see a large amount of corporate sponsorship and interest.
Music Hack Day, a hackathon for music-related software and hardware applications, is a popular event, having been held over 30 times around the world since 2009. Also Music Tech Fest, a three-day interdisciplinary festival for music ideas bringing together musicians with hackers, researchers and industry, features a hackathon.Similarly, Science Hack Day, a hackathon for making things with science, has been held over 45 times in over 15 countries around the world since 2010.
Hackathons have been held to develop applications that run on various mobile device operating systems, such as Android, iOS and MeeGo.Hackathons have also been held to develop video-based applications and computer games.[Hackathons where video games are developed are sometimes called game jams.
